Tuesday, June 05, 2018
Standing up to the UN shows America’s greatness
It happened again last week. When the UN Security Council voted to condemn Israel for what happened along its border with Gaza — without even mentioning Hamas, let alone acknowledging the terror group’s responsibility for the violence — not a single nation joined the United States in opposing the motion. When UN Ambassador Nikki Haley then put forward a separate measure condemning Hamas, the rest of the council either voted no or abstained.
That leaves Americans asking whether fears about having the rest of the world aligned against us are more important than pride in being willing to stand up and do the right thing, even if it means being alone.
This isn’t the only time the US has stood alone recently and it’s got the foreign-policy establishment as well as America’s European allies up in arms. The same thing happened when President Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and when he pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal. His critics took the refusal of America’s Western European allies to agree as a sign that his administration’s foreign policy is doomed to fail.
By contrast, they point to the Obama administration’s popularity with the international community, which cheered as Barack Obama championed an effort to appease and end the isolation of the Islamist regime. They were pleased as Obama sought to put more “daylight” between the US and Israel and by his allowing the Security Council to condemn Israel. Much of the world also approved of Obama’s decision to punt responsibility for the slaughter in Syria and much else to Russia.
Obama’s love affair with international organizations like the UN was at the heart of his faith in multilateralism. While not every interaction during that time began with an apology for all of America’s alleged sins, there was little question that he wanted the world to know that the era when the US could impose its will or its values on other nations seemed to be over.
Israel Praises Trump Administration’s New Approach to Combat U.N. ‘Hypocrisy’
Israel on Friday praised a new Trump administration strategy that seeks to combat the hostility and hypocrisy of members of the United Nations Security Council.'JEWISH JIHADISTS': Joy Reid’s Blog Published Posts Blaming Jews For Terrorism
The strategy was unveiled Friday when U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley vetoed a resolution sponsored by Kuwait seeking to condemn Israel for the "excessive, disproportionate and indiscriminate" use of force "against Palestinian civilians," according to The Jerusalem Post.
Kuwait introduced the resolution in response to weeks of rioting and violence along the border between Israel and Palestinian-controlled Gaza. The violence erupted towards the end of March when thousands of demonstrators swarmed the border for what organizers call the "March of Return." The demonstrators, demanding that Palestinian refugees and their descendants be allowed to return to what is now Israel, have attacked Israeli soldiers in an effort to breach the border.
The violence has resulted in approximately 120 Palestinians being killed and hundreds wounded.
The Kuwait resolution made no mention of Hamas, the terrorist group governing the Gaza Strip, and the role it has played in encouraging Palestinian demonstrators to assail Israel Defense Forces with incendiary kites and Molotov cocktails. Instead, the resolution laid the sole blame for the violence at the feet of Israel, ignoring accounts, from both Israel and Hamas, indicating a large portion of the demonstrators killed were affiliated with terrorist organizations.
The resolution, which garnered the support of 10 of the 15 Security Council members, would also have granted "international protection" for Palestinians in Gaza and insisted Israel cease its actions in self-defense.
Embattled MSNBC host Joy Reid once promoted the conspiracy theory that "Jewish Jihadists" were responsible for Islamic terrorism, according to newly discovered screenshots obtained by The Daily Wire.
Screenshots from a post dated July 21, 2006, show that "JReid" blamed Jews in Israel for Islamic terrorism and appeared to go as far as justifying terrorism against Israel. The post states:
The bottom line now is the same as it has always been: you cannot kill enough of your enemies to make the people of the Muslim world accept, respect, or permit themselves to be dominated by you. Eventually, the occupied will get even. Eventually, the people you consider terrorists will fight you hard enough, and long enough, that the people they say they are fighting for believe them, far more than they believe you. And then the people you're bombing in the name of fighting terrorism, will hate you so much, they'll take up arms with your "terrorists" -- or look the other way as they move in next door -- in order to see harm done to you.
Reid continued by saying that terrorism is not a simple "black and white equation," but rather a symptom of a disease that is "transmitted by colonialism, resource greed, racism, (and Zionism)..." It is not clear why Reid wrote "and Zionism" in parenthesis.
Will the World Finally Turn Off the UNRWA Spigot?
It’s been a rough few months for UNRWA — the UN agency dedicated to providing care for more than five million Palestinians in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Gaza, and the West Bank. And the worst may be yet to come when UNRWA’s principal donors meet in Amman in June.For first time ever, Russia to celebrate independence in Jerusalem
According to sources close to events, the discussions may touch on the agency’s future.
Portents of bad news arrived in December, with the results of Lebanon’s first-ever census of Palestinian residents. The count showed the number of Palestinians living in Lebanon was only one third of the number on UNRWA’s official rolls — 174,422 people instead of 449,987.
The discrepancy of 272,565 people who either never existed or relocated was waved away by UNWRA spokeswoman Huda Samra, who stated that UNRWA doesn’t count anyway. “UNRWA does not have a headcount of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon,” she said. “What we have are official registration records for the number of registered Palestine refugees in Lebanon. If someone registered with UNRWA in Lebanon decided to live outside Lebanon, they don’t notify us.”
Yet a drop of 66% in numbers has significant implications for UNRWA’s funding stream.
January also brought bad news for the organization. Because of long-held doubts about UNRWA activities — and what it was actually doing with foreign contributions — the US withheld half of the first tranche of aid that it was expected to deliver to the agency, releasing only $60 million of an anticipated $125 million.
The US is UNRWA’s largest donor. Last year, it supplied $360 million of UNRWA’s $1.2 billion yearly budget.
Russia will, for the first time, hold its annual Russia Day reception in Jerusalem on June 12, a year after declaring that west Jerusalem is Israel's capital. Until now, the reception has been held in the Tel Aviv area.Despite embassy relocation, Trump signs presidential waiver
The move came weeks after the US moved its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
The Russian reception will be held in Sergei Courtyard -- which until it was returned to the Russians in 2012 held the offices of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel. A spokesman for the embassy stressed that the property was returned to Russia by Israel in 2008.
“Basically we believe that this compound symbolizes our culture and traditions, and is a genuine Russian piece of land in Israel, and in the Mideast in general,” he said. Sergei’s Courtyard is part of Jerusalem’s historic Russian Compound.
Russia Day, marking the adoption of the Declaration of Independence of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1990, is June 12, but the reception will be held on June 14. The declaration followed the breakup of the Soviet Union and proclaimed sovereignty over the Russian federation, and an intent to establish a democratic constitutional state.
US President Donald Trump on Monday signed a presidential waiver that suspends for six months a law mandating the US embassy be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem — despite the fact that the embassy officially opened in Jerusalem last month.MEMRI: Germany Is Far Removed From Its Dark Past, But Its Iran Policy Is Sordid
Trump’s move was necessitated by the fact that the ambassador’s official residence has not yet been relocated to the capital.
Like all his predecessor have done every six months since the Jerusalem Embassy Act took effect in 1998, Trump signed a memorandum in which he determined “that it is necessary, in order to protect the national security interests of the United States, to suspend” for half a year the full implementation of the law.
“In addition to requiring a move of the embassy, the Jerusalem Embassy Act also requires a transfer of the chief of mission residence. Until that transfer is completed, the waiver that is provided under the Act remains necessary,” a US embassy official told The Times of Israel on Tuesday.
Section 3 of the Jerusalem Embassy Act, which lays out the actual policy change required, only states that “the United States Embassy in Israel should be established in Jerusalem.” But section 8 clarifies that “the term ‘United States Embassy’ means the offices of the United States diplomatic mission and the residence of the United States chief of mission.”
The new US embassy in the capital’s Arnona neighborhood opened with a large ceremony on May 14 attended by senior US officials. But the official residence of the American ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, currently is still in the Tel Aviv suburb of Herzliya.
Speaking to The Times of Israel last week, Friedman said his team has started “looking at” acquiring an official residence, but explained that for the time being he divides his time between Jerusalem and the Tel Aviv area.
If any country in the world could be expected to be extremely cautious about aligning with anyone calling for Israel's annihilation, it would be Germany, regardless of any extenuating circumstances – economic, political or otherwise. The Bundesrepublik should have distanced itself from any substantial tie with the Islamic Republic of Iran, whose murderous regime is threatening to annihilate Israel. Germany was the first country that should have told the morally relativistic Barack Obama that totalitarian regimes, like Germany's own Nazi regime, are beyond the pale, and should be denied any legitimacy, particularly when it comes to a nuclear deal with them. Germany's past should have enjoined her to openly take the moral lead in promoting regime change when dealing with a totalitarian regime such as Iran.Ignoring abuse of minorities among Muslims
The reality is tragically the opposite. After rising from the ashes and becoming a stable humanistic democracy, Germany is supporting murderous totalitarian regimes. Germany, that preaches human rights to other countries – for example, to Saudi Arabia over its actions in Yemen, and rightly so – has shut its eyes to the notorious human rights violations in Iran, and to Iran's terrorizing and murder of its own citizens. Iran, of course, is a major partner, along with Russia, in the greatest humanitarian catastrophe of the 21st century – the Assad regime's slaughter and displacement of millions of Syrians.
The reversal of the Obama-foisted Iran policy by the Trump administration provided Germany with a golden opportunity to reclaim its professed values. But the reverse happened: Germany is legitimizing Iran, even championing it.
What motivates Germany to adopt such a shameful and immoral policy?
A possible motivation is anti-U.S. sentiment that did not begin with Donald Trump, and that goes back decades. Trump, of course, greatly exacerbated this sentiment when he spoke of America First, demanded that Germany and other European states pay their way in NATO, and threatened to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum exports to the U.S. (Germany has in fact run up a trade surplus with the U.S. of $65 billion – the third largest surplus after China and Japan – but the Germans still feel that the tariffs are a hostile act against them).
When non-Muslim minorities in the Islamic world face atrocities that are committed by Muslims, there is seldom is criticism by any of the major players in the international community. From the massacre of Rohingya Hindus to the oppression of the Iranian Bahai community to the atrocities committed by Turkey and its allies against the Yezidis, where is the international outrage?The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act Doesn’t Restrict Free Speech—it Helps Prevent Bullying
In recent times, Turkey has committed many atrocities against Yezidis in the Afrin region. According to a Gatestone Institute report, the Kurds have been booted out of the area, Afrin is now ruled under Muslim law, and there are reports that Yezidi temples in the area have been destroyed. According to some reports, Yezidi residents have been forcibly taken to mosques in order to convert to Islam. But few in the international community are speaking out against the persecution of Yezidis in Afrin.
According to Article 13 of the Iranian constitution, Zoroastrians, Jews and Christians are the only recognized religious minorities in the country, implying that the Bahai faith receives no protection. As an Iranian Islamist judge stated in 1983, the Iranian government "cannot tolerate the perverted Bahais who are instruments of Satan and followers of the devil and of the superpowers and their agents. It is absolutely certain that in the Islamic Republic of Iran, there is no place whatsoever for Bahais and Bahaism."
Data released in February by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) showed an astounding 57% increase in anti-Semitic incidents across the United States in 2017, including physical assaults, vandalism, and attacks on Jewish institutions.NGO Monitor: The Center for Constitutional Rights’ Vilification of Social Justice
Every part of the country was affected, with an incident reported in each of the 50 states for the first time in at least a decade. This sharp rise, the ADL observed, was due in part to a significant increase in incidents in schools and on college campuses, which nearly doubled for the second year in a row. The trend persists in 2018.
The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, or AAA, was drafted to help the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) recognize anti-Semitic incidents on campus by using the U.S. State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism to evaluate complaints under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
Title VI obligates universities that receive federal funds to prevent peer-to-peer harassment based on race, color, or national origin when the harassment “is so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it effectively bars the victim’s access to an educational opportunity or benefit.” The OCR evaluates reported incidents in part by considering the speech that accompanies them.
Does that mean Title VI limits speech? No. Speech – including hate speech – is protected under the First Amendment. But speech can be used as evidence in investigating Title VI harassment claims of misconduct, such as assaults, battery and vandalism.
From April 29 – May 6, 2018, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), an American non-governmental organization (NGO) that promotes BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) and lawfare campaigns against Israel, led a trip to Israel and the West Bank labeled as the “Justice Delegation.” This trip, made up of self-proclaimed social justice advocates, claimed to provide a “better understand[ing of] the human rights situation in Israel and Palestine.”Louis Farrakhan warns against ‘Satanic Jews’ in Chicago speech
In sharp contrast, participants met exclusively Palestinian and Israeli organizations that promote a one-sided Palestinian narrative of the conflict. These NGOs include those that promote BDS, lawfare, antisemitism, and even some that have links to the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization. Throughout the trip, delegates tweeted using the hashtag #JusticeDelegation, exposing their own biased itinerary.
Meetings with PFLP Terror Group Affiliated NGOs and Individuals
Addameer
On May 2, Vince Warren – Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights – tweeted that the “#JusticeDelegation met with @Addameer…”
The Palestinian NGO Addameer is a leader of campaigns in support of Palestinians prisoners convicted of security offenses, referring to them as “political prisoners” and altogether omitting the context of violence and terror.
More importantly, according to Fatah, Addameer is an affiliate of the PFLP. Addameer’s former vice-chairperson Khalida Jarrar is a senior PFLP official. Jarrar was administratively detained on April 1, 2015 by Israeli security forces. On April 15, 2015 she was indicted for various offenses including active membership in a terrorist organization (the PFLP) and inciting violence through a call to kidnap Israeli soldiers to be used as “bargaining chips for the release of Palestinian prisoners.” Jarrar accepted a plea bargain and was reportedly convicted on “one count of belonging to an illegal organization and another of incitement” receiving a 15-month prison sentence with an additional 10-month suspended sentence. She was released from prison on June 3, 2016. According to Addameer, Jarrar was re-arrested in July 2017 for six months. In December 2017, the detention was extended by another six months to July 2018. At least 10 other Addameer staff members have ties and/or have been arrested for being affiliated with the terror group.
Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan attacked Jews and Judaism during a three-hour sermon from his pulpit at Mosque Maryam in Chicago.Farrakhan Supporter Tamika Mallory Booted Out of Major Australian Conference After New Antisemitic Outburst
The sermon on May 27 was his first major public speaking appearance since February, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
During his sermon Farrakhan, a known anti-Semite, warned his listeners about “Satanic Jews who have infected the whole world with poison and deceit.”
Farrakhan also claimed that contemporary Jews are responsible for promoting child molestation, misogyny, police brutality and sexual assault, among other social ills. In addition, he asserted that contemporary Judaism is nothing but a “system of tricks and lies” which Jews study in order to learn how to “dominate” non-Jews.
Farrakhan based his some of his mischaracterization of Judaism on a distorted reading of the Talmud, according to ADL.
Tamika Mallory — a co-organizer of the 2017 Women’s March on Washington, DC, and outspoken supporter of antisemitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan — has been booted out of a major social policy conference in Australia, following a vehemently anti-Israel speech she delivered last Friday.Media won’t ask Horwath about NDP’s association with anti-Israel activist
Mallory had been scheduled to speak at the 2018 Good Life Summit which begins in Melbourne on June 13. The event brings together high-profile politicians and advocates to discuss poverty, education, healthcare access, domestic violence and other social policy questions. Among this year’s speakers are Daniel Andrews, prime minister of the Australian state of Victoria, Matthew Guy, leader of the opposition Liberal Party, and Nayuka Gorrie, a prominent Aboriginal rights activist.
On Monday, summit organizers told The Australian newspaper that the invitation to Mallory had been withdrawn out of concern that her latest incendiary attack on Israel would “overshadow” the event.
Addressing the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, a far-left organization, via a video link on Friday, Mallory described the creation of the Jewish state 70 years ago as a “human rights crime.”
“It’s clear you (sic) needed a place to go — cool, we got that, I hear that,” Mallory said of the Jewish people in the wake of the Holocaust. “But you don’t show up to somebody’s home, needing a place to stay, and decide that you’re going to throw them out and hurt the people who are on that land.”
She continued: “And to kill, steal, and do whatever it is you’re gonna do to take that land. That to me is unfair. It’s a human rights crime.”
A spokesperson for the summit in Melbourne said organizers were perturbed “both by comments Ms. Mallory made in recent days regarding Israeli-Palestinian affairs, and the capacity for these remarks to overshadow the Good Life Summit.”
Tamika Mallory is the co-president of the National Women’s March, the feminist anti-Trump tantrum that just won’t stop. She’s a fist pumping radical of all things leftist — like hating men, playing identity politics and admonishing Israel for defending its borders.Media won’t ask Horwath about NDP ties to anti-Israel activist
And she’s a long-time supporter of the Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan, a man who calls Jews evil and pushed conspiracy theories about Jews controlling the world.
But none of that stopped Canada's Federal NDP party from inviting Mallory to headline their recent National Convention in Ottawa that broke out into a televised civil war when many delegates felt the party’s BDS motion didn’t go far enough.
Mallory is at it again, taking to Facebook Live to deny the indigenous nature of the Jewish people inside the state of Israel and calling the creation of the Jewish homeland a crime.
Taking Public E-Mails Private: How Durham City Council Promotes Anti-Israel Discrimination by Avoiding Transparency
In May, the Jewish Federation of Durham-Chapel Hill and the Voice for Israel advocacy group denounced the City Council of Durham, North Carolina for “imposing a total ban on police exchanges with only one country in the world: the Jewish nation of Israel.”PMW: Who’s politicizing sports?
“There was no evidence to support the City Council’s actions, only propaganda lies promoted by a group that has a well-documented animus toward the Jewish state,” they wrote in a joint complaint filed with the Durham Human Relations Commission.
On April 16, the day the ban was unanimously approved, Rabbi Zalman Bluming was one of many speakers who pleaded with the City Council not to discriminate against Israel and Jews. “My phone has been ringing non-stop over the last week, [from] young adults that live here that feel unsafe, that feel marginalized, that feel as if for some reason they’ve been singled out,” he explained.
I have since filed more than two dozen public record requests with Durham, trying to understand exactly what happened. While many requests are still pending, here are a few salient findings.
An information packet given to Durham City Council members by the deceptively titled group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) was obtained by a public records request. It reveals that elected officials were encouraged to “boycott and divest from the brutality of policing by both the US and Israeli governments.” In the online version of the petition, activists falsely claimed that Israel trains police to “terrorize Black and Brown communities here in the US,” but notably didn’t explicitly frame their call as a “boycott.”
Fatah Central Committee Secretary and Chairman of the Palestinian Football Association Jibril Rajoub has complained over the fact that Argentina is to play a friendly football match against Israel in what he called "occupied" Jerusalem this coming Saturday.
In his official "protest letter" to the Argentine Football Association and other international football associations, Rajoub reportedly "expressed deep concern over the match being held in occupied Jerusalem" and stated that Israel has "politicized" sports:
"Israel, the occupying power, has politicized the sport in a way that contradicts the moral standards and international values that determine the principles of the sport." [WAFA, official PA news agency, May 28, 2018]
But who is really politicizing sports?
The answer is: Rajoub himself.
In the case of Argentina, Rajoub has gone as far as "demanding" that Arab fans "burn" their Messi shirts as a way of intimidating Messi into not coming to Jerusalem to play later this week:
Argentina cancels Israel soccer friendly following Palestinian pressure – report
In the face of intense Palestinian pressure, Argentina has decided to pull out of a highly anticipated soccer match against Israel, days before Lionel Messi and co were scheduled to be take the pitch in Jerusalem, media reports said Tuesday.After Tracey Ullman Roasts Corbyn in BBC Sketch, Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories Abound
The South Americans made the decision to withdraw from the Saturday friendly and informed the Israeli organizers, but have not yet made an official announcement, according to widespread reports in Argentinean media.
The game, Argentina’s final warm up match before the World Cup in Russia, which begins next week, was highly anticipated in Israel with tickets selling out in 20 minutes, but drew a furious reaction from the Palestinians.
The team decided to nix the game both over mounting pressure from pro-Palestinian groups and concerns over security for the Jerusalem match, the Buenos-Aires based Clarin daily reported.
Following the news, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Argentinian President Mauricio Macri to urge him to intercede with the Argentinian authorities to try and forestall the cancellation, the Ynet news site quoted a senior Israeli official as saying.
“The team is hesitant to come to Israel because of all the pressure that has been placed on them,” the official said. There was no word on Macri’s reaction.
In a sketch aired on her BBC show this Friday, comedian Tracey Ullman, dressed up as Jeremy Corbyn, was standing in line for a cab at Heathrow and chatting to some young admirers when an Orthodox man appears and speaks sternly to the Labour leader about the rampant anti-Semitism in his party.You can watch the sketch Baddiel didn’t write here:
“I hear you,” says Corbyn. “I am all over it like cream cheese on a bagel. It’s alright to say that, isn’t it?” The Orthodox man, disgusted, takes his leave, and Corbyn turns to his fans and assures them that he’s very serious about combating Jew-hatred. “I want you to know that I am completely on top of all this Jewish stuff,” he says. “I have spoken to every single anti-Semite in the Labour party and I’ve told them, in no uncertain terms, tone it down a bit!”
It’s all downhill from there, with Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams and a representative of Hamas popping up to puncture Corbyn’s desperate attempt at dodging his past and appearing respectable. But the sketch’s real punchline, in a sense, landed long after the broadcast had concluded: Dylan Strain, an actor and comedian whose Twitter profile features a photograph of himself with Corbyn, took to the social network to argue not only that the sketch was “propaganda masquerading as satire” but that it was written by a famous Jewish comedian named David Baddiel. Strain later told the Guardian that he was only kidding, but that didn’t stop George Galloway, the vehemently anti-Israel politician, from retweeting Strain’s allegation to his 289,000 followers and starting a conspiracy theory online that the Jews were using the BBC to unfairly target Corbyn.
Baddiel himself seemed indignant about the affair. “It does speak of something unconscious which is their sense that everything must involve elitist conspiracy, that it’s all connected and that anyone who they believe is trying to stop Corbyn getting into power must have links and be working together,” he told the Guardian about his online slanderers. “The idea seems to be that if I have said something to call out anti-Semitism in the Labour party, then if there’s something or someone else doing that then I must be behind it in some way. At a deeper level, that speaks about myths of Jewish conspiracy, of Jewish control of the media etc.”
British Universities Oppose Boycotting Israeli Academia
British universities oppose an academic boycott of Israel, according to a statement made last week by the head of the international arm of the University Association of Britain and the President of Exeter University, Sir Steve Smith.Pro-Palestinian Student Says She’ll ‘F**k Up A Zionist’
During a meeting between representatives of British universities and the heads of universities in Israel, Smith emphasized to the heads of the latter the “commitment of the British Universities Union against any academic boycott with an emphasis on Israel and the importance of not allowing political or other issues to harm the cooperation between the institutions.”
The explicit resistance by Britain comes in the wake of several attempts to implement an academic boycott of Israel. Such calls were made by university heads and senior officials in the higher education system in Norway, Ireland and the United States, among others.
In addition to what he told the Israeli academic leaders personally, Smith also sent a written statement on the subject to the British Universities Union, which was approved in 2015, and which also strongly opposes an academic boycott of Israel.
"The British University Committee is committed to the free sharing of ideas between universities and in academia,” the statement said, “regardless of nationality and place. Therefore the committee strongly opposes an academic boycott on the grounds that it is hostile to academic freedom, including academic freedom to cooperate with one another."
It further stated that “the committee wishes to ratify its previous position regarding the boycott of Israeli universities."
The really fascinating thing I’ve discovered about the left is that they’ll suppress speech involving political opinions, but when it comes to threatening or inciting violence, they’ll use it very liberally — both in the free sense and the political one. Case in point: Florida State University student Reem Zaitoon, who tweeted “Announcer at [National Students for Justice in Palestine]: There’s police here for our safety [because] there are people who are upset & angry that we are here. Me: I’ll f**k up a Zionist.”Campus Unmasked: Pro-Palestinian Student Says She’ll ‘F**k Up A Zionist’
And lest you think Zaitoon is one of those moderate Palestinians, here she says “Zionists can kick & scream for a two state but it will never happen- we WILL achieve liberation within our lifetime & it will be a single state called Palestine, whether they like it or not.” And of course, don’t think she’ll just focus her zaniness on the East and leave the West alone.
“We will see a Unified Korea & a Free Palestine, enshallah, as soon as we dismantle the United States.” “Happy Valentine’s Day death to the United States long live the DPRK.” I wonder if she’d be able to make such a remark about her country if she actually lived in North Korea…I wonder if she’d even be allowed to use the Internet.
As for Florida State’s SJP chapter, they issued a statement, which Zaitoon shared, saying that “many of the tweets [Canary Mission refers] to are legitimate criticisms of Israeli governmental policies and practices” but “a few tweets and posts that we are referring to are undeniably racist and anti-Semitic” and that people who “made such posts are no longer members of our organization nor are they students at FSU.”
IsraellyCool: One of My Favorite Photos of Israel Haters Of All Time
This photo of BDS-holes protesting in Berlin really says a lot – none of which they intended!
AIJAC writes to the ABC asking it to explain the lack of coverage of Gaza rocket attacks
The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) has written to ABC Managing Director Michelle Guthrie asking her to explain the ABC's glaring lack of coverage of the biggest rocket and mortar attacks launched by Hamas and Islamic Jihad on Israel since the 2014 war.BBC ‘Newshour’ presenter Donnison decides an Israeli’s identity
AIJAC Executive Director Colin Rubenstein today said the ABC's decision not to cover last week's large-scale violence appeared to be "one more addition in a growing list of glaring failures by the taxpayer funded ABC to meet its statutory requirements to be fair and balanced in its coverage."
He noted that apart from one Al Jazeera sourced report broadcast twice on ABC Radio National "News Radio", the ABC could apparently find no room on any of its many flagship programs or websites to report on an attack unequivocally condemned by numerous world leaders and the UN's own Middle East envoy.
Dr Rubenstein noted that," As AIJAC's letter says, more than 200 rockets were indiscriminately fired at Israel. The UN's own Middle East envoy Nickolay Mladenov said the ‘firing of rockets and mortars against civilians cannot be justified under any circumstances'. Yet there was no coverage on AM, PM, Breakfast, 7.30, ABC TV News, nor abc.net.au."
"This almost complete lack of coverage stands in contrast to most of the Australian media - including Fairfax, News Ltd and SBS - which seemed to have no problem identifying the attacks and the international reaction to them as newsworthy," he added.
According to a study carried out last year by the Israel Democracy Institute just 14% of the Arab citizens of Israel define their primary identity as Palestinian. However, even in the contemporary era of race and gender self-identification, one BBC World Service radio presenter appears to have granted himself the prerogative of deciding how Israel’s Arab citizens should be defined.Anti-Extremist Muslim Imam Tawhidi Banned From Facebook After Mocking Hamas
On June 3rd an edition of the BBC World Service radio programme ‘Newshour‘ included an interview with the Program Director of the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Presenter Jon Donnison introduced the item (from 19:34 here) as follows:
Donnison: “To Germany now and at the Jewish Museum in Berlin a kippa – the skullcap worn by many religious Jewish men – has gone on display. Nothing too unusual about that you might think but this is a specific kippa. It was worn by a young secular Palestinian Israeli man Adam Armoush in Berlin who put it on to show solidarity with his Jewish friends. Things went badly though. He was violently set upon in the street by a Syrian refugee in an anti-Semitic attack. Video footage of the attack went viral on social media and led to widespread demonstrations with thousands of people of all faiths or none wearing kippot in support of Adam Armoush. His kippa is going on display in the Jewish Museum’s new ‘rapid response’ gallery which aims to highlight contemporary issues in the news.”
As Adam Armoush explained in interviews given to German and Israeli media after the attack, the reason he walked down that Berlin street wearing a kippa was not the one given by Donnison.
Facebook banned anti-extremist Australian Imam Mohammad Tawhidi after he sarcastically mocked Hamas in a post.
Imam Tawhidi has built a following online as the “Imam of Peace,” a critic of extremist Islam and their allies on the political left, as well as a critic of the mainstream media for their overly-sympathetic coverage of radical Islam. He frequently holds dialogues with critics of Islam on the right, including Tommy Robinson.
Tawhidi says his Facebook page has been unpublished after he made a post mocking the terrorist group Hamas, and speaking in sarcastic terms about “peaceful Palestinian protests.”
.@facebook has blocked my profile and unpublished my Fan page because I spoke sarcastically of terrorist Hamas and called them a ‘Global Charity Organisation’ after launching a missile into a Jewish kindergarten. Judge for yourself. pic.twitter.com/6nE7XNuDmK
— Imam Tawhidi (@Imamofpeace) June 4, 2018
The Shameful Record of the Church and the Holocaust in Canada
I’m sure that I was not the only one who watched the white supremacist rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia last summer — including the chanted slogan “Jews will not replace us” — and thought of an earlier time during the 1930s and ’40s when fascism and antisemitism were in vogue.Egypt's Al-Azhar Insists on Anti-Semitism
As a reminder of that period, I reread the book None Is Too Many by Irving Abella and Harold Troper. First published in 1983, it documents efforts by the Canadian Civil Service to bar entry to European Jewish refugees trying to save themselves from the Holocaust.
The book’s title, a reply by an unnamed bureaucrat to the question of how many Jews should be admitted to Canada after World War II, is no exaggeration. Few Jewish refugees were admitted to Canada during the immediate post-war period (1945-1948) and only 500 were admitted from 1939-1945, when the search for sanctuary was most desperate.
Abella and Troper make it clear that the civil servants involved were complying with the wishes of the political establishment, from Prime Minister Mackenzie King on down. Due to widespread antisemitism, there were no votes on admitting Jewish refugees to Canada and the frantic efforts of the leaders of the 175,000 member Jewish community were useless, even in exceptional cases related to family reunification or when affluent applicants offered to transfer substantial assets to Canada.
Yet one area not fully addressed by Abella and Troper is the role of the Canadian churches.
Signed by politicians from the right and left, as well as Jewish, Muslim and Catholic leaders, the declaration asks that "the verses of the Quran calling for the killing and punishment of Jews, Christians and unbelievers be [denounced as] outdated by theological [Islamic] authorities, as were the incoherencies of the Bible and the Catholic anti-Semitism abolished by Vatican II, so that no believer can rely on a sacred text to commit a crime."Sign at future San Diego Jewish center vandalized with threatening graffiti
"He [Abbas Shoman, Deputy to the Grand Imam of Al Azhar] also asked the signatories of the manifesto to understand that the Quran is the right way and "if they insist on their misguided understanding [of it], they should go to hell with their wrong understanding." — El Masry al Youm, Egyptian daily.
One wonders how, after having been taught Islamic supremacy all their lives, imams could even try to understand such a manifesto. Sheikh Shoman's remarks may just indicate his own indoctrinated anti-Semitism.
Saying that "Islamist violence has nothing to do with Islam" does not make it so. Like or not, it does.
Threatening graffiti was written on a sign announcing the future home of the University of California San Diego Hillel Jewish Center in the United States.Israeli firm builds poultry farms from Angola to Vietnam
The graffiti discovered early Monday morning read “F**k You All” in letters which could be said to resemble Nazi swastikas.
Hillel staff members washed the graffiti off, according to the NBC San Diego affiliate.
“I was disappointed, I was sad. I grew up here in La Jolla. I don’t want to see that graffiti on any institution,” Hillel Center executive director Rabbi David Singer told NBC 7.
Singer reported the graffiti to the local police and to the local office of the Anti-Defamation League. Police told NBC 7 that the graffiti incident is under investigation, but that so far they do not consider it a hate crime.
The classic chicken-or-egg conundrum does not keep poultry farm designers from the Israeli firm Agrotop awake at night.Six movies not to be missed at the Israel Film Center Festival in New York
They’re too busy solving other challenges, like how to build a chicken house on the steep Himalayan slopes of Nepal. Or how to construct a 60,000-layer egg house in the Canary Islands on a narrow footprint (half the levels were built underground with a sophisticated ventilation system).
Since its founding in 1989, Agrotop has been planning, engineering and constructing poultry and livestock projects in 50 countries –plus feed mills, slaughterhouses and packing centers –suitable for temperatures ranging from -40 to +50 degrees Celsius.
The business of livestock construction projects is big and varied, so Agrotop has worked at distinguishing itself from other players and also working cooperatively with other players, says engineer Yaron Zafrani, Agrotop’s vice president for sales.
Adventuresome film-goers in New York City rarely have to worry about a lack of options, but starting June 5, this week brings special treasures from the Mideast. For a typically Jewish eight nights, the Israel Film Center hosts its annual festival, showcasing the largest collection of sabra cinema to unspool in one spot.History of Mossad assassinations to be turned into TV show
This is the 6th annual Israeli Film Center Festival so we figured it was a good idea to check back in the chief programmer, Isaac Zablocki of the Upper West Side’s Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan.
“We have a very good list this year,” Zablocki boasts. “I keep looking them over and, wow, these are good films!”
Some of the titles will eventually get a US theatrical release, but not all of them. “Last year was extremely strong, I counted at one point 10 Israeli films played theatrically in New York,” Zablocki tells me.
So what’s on the menu this year? Opening night, in addition to fêting actor Sasson Gabai (whose face you surely remember from world class Israeli triumphs like “The Band’s Visit” or, if not that, at least “Rocky III” and “Delta Force One: The Lost Patrol”), is the local premiere of prolific Israeli director Eran Riklis‘ “Shelter.”
Riklis, whose previous work includes “Lemon Tree,” “The Syrian Bride” and “Dancing Arabs,” is on firm footing here.
The history of the Mossad's targeted assassinations will be turned into a television show, Deadline Hollywood reported.
Keshet and HBO have optioned to turn the bestselling book Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations, by Ronen Bergman, into a television show.
The show is currently planned to be an English-language limited series which will be filmed in Israel.
The title of the book and the upcoming show are based on a Talmudic saying: 'If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first (Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Berachot, 58A).'
In writing his book, Bergman obtained the cooperation of many current and former members of the Israeli government, including Prime Ministers Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, and Binyamin Netanyahu, as well as high-level figures in Israel's defense and intelligence agencies. This cooperation allowed him to describe in detail many of the most high-profile intelligence operations carried out in Israel's history.
